Some thieves cut the telephony wires to houses and uses inhibitors to disable any chance of the inhabitants to call for help using either a fixed of a mobile phone, even if they have an automated burglar alarm set with both possibilities. These assaults sometimes cause victims. The idea is to detect, using network measurements, the usage of inhibitors to issue an alert to burglar alarm's companies. Then they may poll to their customers' equipment under the coverage of the affected cell to check if the alarm is still operative.
The current alternative is to poll regularly the alarm sets to detect the continuity of the link. This service is offered as a plus by the Security Companies and it is priced highly, according with the costs of using so much transmission. For example, the patent application WO2004028184 Alarm arrangement at a mobile communication system, describes a system wherein each mobile terminal transmits signals regularly, randomly or when triggered by an event. The regularly or randomly transmitted signals are registered in the system's switching center. Where a signal is missing, information on the absence is, after logic analysis in the switching center, immediately and automatically transmitted to the alarm reception center.
The US patent application U.S. Pat. No. 5,687,217, describes a method and system for verifying that each remote cell unit in a cellular phone system is operational. The system and method in accordance with the invention use the receiver equipment of each cell unit to listen to or monitor transmissions by other cell units. Each cell unit is independently placed in a listen verification mode in which it measures communication quality of other cell units that it can hear. The selected cell unit reports the communication quality results to a master control unit. The master control unit stores the result information to allow a comparison of communication quality over time. If communication quality has degraded over time by a significant amount, the master control unit signals an alarm. In another aspect of the present invention, the listen verification mode can be used during installation of the cellular system to verify performance of the system and adjust the system for optimal performance.
The applications WO2006099548 and WO2006099547 describes an interference control in a wireless communication system wherein a first sector estimates interference observed from terminals in neighbor sectors and obtains an interference estimate. The first sector may generate an over-the-air (OTA) other-sector interference (OSI) report and/or an inter-sector (IS) OSI report based on the interference estimate. The first sector may send the IS OSI report to the neighbor sectors, receive IS OSI reports from the neighbor sectors, and regulate data transmissions for terminals in the first sector based on the received IS OSI reports. The first sector may control admission of terminals to the first sector, de-assign admitted terminals, schedule terminals in sector in a manner to reduce interference to the neighbor sectors, and/or assign the terminals in sector with traffic channels that cause less interference to the neighbor sectors. They are substantially different to the method proposed because they are based on the interchange of measurements by several base stations to perform advanced power control procedures.